The Guardian UK once again steps up to the plate. This time to evaluate evidence tying Iraq to al-Qaida.
Establishing the link is essential to persuading the public that Iraq represents an imminent threat, and President Bush insisted that hard evidence in the shape of “intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody” proved the connection was real.
But the intelligence analysts in the US and Britain on whose work the president’s claim was supposedly based say the connections are tangential at best, and the available evidence falls far short of proving a secret relationship between Baghdad and Osama bin Laden. One intelligence source in Washington, who has seen CIA material on the link, described the case as “soft” and “squishy”.
Also see the LA Times on this.
